Philip Caputo

Philip Caputo is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of many well-known books, both fiction and non-fiction. His latest is "Some Rise by Sin," a novel published in May. He is best-known for two non-fiction books: the award-winning Vietnam memoir "A Rumor of War" and New York Times best-seller "The Longest Road." Phil divides his time between homes in Norwalk, Connecticut and Patagonia, Arizona.

New York Times bestselling author Philip Caputo tells the story of a Franciscan priest struggling to walk a moral path through the shifting and fatal realities of an isolated Mexican village The Mexican village of San Patricio is being menaced by a bizarre, cultish drug cartel infamous for its brutality. As the townspeople try to defend themselves by forming a vigilante group, the Mexican army and police have their own ways of fighting back. Into this volatile mix of forces for good and evil (and sometimes both) steps an unlikely broker for peace: Timothy Riordan, an American missionary priest who must decide whether to betray his vows to stop the unspeakable violence and help the people he has pledged to protect. Riordan’s fellow expatriate Lisette Moreno serves the region in a different way, as a doctor who makes “house calls” to impoverished settlements, advocating modern medicine to a traditional society wary of outsiders. To gain acceptance, she must keep secret her rocky love affair with artist Pamela Childress, whose troubled emotions lead Moreno to question their relationship. Together, Lisette and Riordan tend to their community. But when Riordan oversteps the bounds of his position, his personal crisis echoes the impossible choices facing a nation beset by instability and bloodshed. Based on actual events, propelled by moral conflict, and animated by a keen and discerning sensibility, Some Rise by Sin demonstrates yet again Philip Caputo’s generous and insightful gifts as a storytellerMore/less

The 40th-anniversary edition of the classic Vietnam memoir—featured in the PBS documentary series The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick—with a new foreword by Kevin Powers. In March of 1965, Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo landed at Danang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history’s ugliest wars, he returned home—physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone. A Rumor of War is far more than one soldier’s story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America’s indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as the author writes, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to them." "Heartbreaking, terrifying, and enraging. It belongs to the literature of men at war."--Los Angeles Times Book ReviewMore/less